Pet-Proto Robot Video Stops Bad Terminator Dreams

Take a look at this video showing DARPA's Pet-Proto robot navigating an obstacle course and put those bad dreams you have of Terminator pursuit out of your heads. It's going to be quite a while before robot pursuit becomes real.

In this video, the Pet-Proto, a predecessor to DARPA's Atlas robot, is confronted with obstacles similar to those robots might face in the DARPA Robotics Challenge (DRC). To maneuver over and around the obstacles, the robot exercises capabilities including autonomous decision-making, dismounted mobility and dexterity. The DARPA Robotics Challenge will test these and other capabilities in a series of tasks that will simulate conditions in a dangerous, degraded, human-engineered environment. Teams participating in Tracks B and C of the DRC will compete for access to a modified version of the Atlas robot for use in the 2013 and 2014 live disaster-response challenge events.

This robot derives from the PETMAN robot, who has been making real progress. PETMAN started out as a kind of consumption robots, as described by Frederik Pohl in his 1954 short story The Midas Plague.

For now, though, you can rest easy. Pet-Proto has a long way to go before matching the Terminator's relentless pursuit gait.